The importance of high impact parameter interactions in the collision induced dissociation of protonated water clusters by argon using a Wien velocity filter

Abstract

High impact parameter, i.e., glancing collisions, are of particular interest in ion beam experiments because ions experiencing such collisions remain available in the ion beam for further experiments. The collisional activation and dissociation processes for glancing collisions of protonated water clusters and argon have been studied with a new and simple, single-stage technique to detect fragment ions using a Wien velocity filter. The technique is specific with regard to the mass of a fragment ion and the mass of the parent from which it originates. A relation is derived and experimentally verified which governs the operation of the device. Absolute values of the attenuation cross section with argon of 11(6), 25(8), 36(11), 47(17), and 66(10) Å have been determined for H3O+, H5O2+, H7O3+, H9O4+, and H11O5+, respectively, at beam energies in the range of 300–1000 eV. Absolute values of the glancing collision induced dissociation cross section of 0.62(4), 4.3(1), and 9.1(6) Å2 have been determined for the detectable fragment ions of H5O2+, H7O3+, and H9O4+, respectively. Branching ratios upon activation by glancing collisions of 0.91:0.09:0 and 0.78:0.18:0.04:0 have been determined for successive loss of waters by H7O3+ and H9O4+, respectively. The one water loss channel predominates. A multiple collision analysis was performed which characterizes the fraction of parent ions which suffer a glancing collision without dissociating or being knocked out of the beam. Our results suggest that the ion beam which emerges from a collision cell can harbor a surprisingly large fraction of parent ions that have obtained a large amount of internal excitation, perhaps ∼0.7 eV per ion suffering a glancing collision.